This Was Former Illinois Gov. Blagoevich's Biggest Crime

It's really hard to muster up sympathy for any politician that uses his office for personal gain. Political corruption is one of the main reasons why the public's confidence in elected officials is at an all-time low. Sometimes corruption takes the form of illegally handing out contracts to donors and friends. Sometimes it's bribery.  Corruption can even be of a sexual nature, like when a politician is caught cheating on a spouse of soliciting sex from a prostitute or a minor.  Yes, there's plenty of corruption in politics, but it's usually hidden from public view, that is until someone is caught or the rare bird comes along who absolutely loves talking about the exchange of money for jobs, political appointments, influence and a U.S. Senate seat.

Former Illinois governor Rod Blagoevich (Blago) was one of those rare birds. The feds had been investigating Blago as early as 2004, after getting information from another investigation involving political fixer and sleaze bucket Stuart Levine. After years of secret wiretaps-- which yielded
numerous conversations of Blago brazenly talking or perhaps fantasizing about making lots and lots of  "campaign" money by way of his office--the feds had enough "evidence" to prosecute Blagoevich.  He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for soliciting donations and for attempting to sell the U. S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama.

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court threw out five of the 18 charges against Blago and ordered his sentence vacated.  According to legal experts, this doesn't mean that Blago will be heading home anytime soon, since the three-judge panel maintained that the evidence against him was "overwhelming."  This likely means that he'll remain behind bars for several more years.

Blagoevich was always a little offbeat to me.  On the one hand, he seemed detached from the job, which is strange because he also seemed to really like being governor.  He never moved into the governor's mansion, preferring to remain in Chicago. Even when he had full knowledge that the feds were on his tail, he seemed to be in an entirely different universe, one where everything was just hunky-dory. It was like he was determined to will away the circling feds, his foes in the statehouse and critics in the press.  However, no amount of mind-over-matter abilities could change his looming fortunes, as the end of 2008 would prove. There had already been subpoenas of friends and investigations of associates. And he increasingly wouldn't, or perhaps simply couldn't tend to the state's business. I suspect that it was the latter, since I always held a suspicion that Rod Blagoevich suffer's from some sort of mental or personality disorder. If I had to make an uneducated guess, I'd say he suffers from delusions of grandure and perhaps even Narcissistic personality disorder.

On December 9, 2008 at 6:15 in the morning, Rod Blagoevich was arrested at his home by U.S. Marshalls. His home became a makeshift campsite for the media, who repeatedly sought comments from not only his wife, but his young children as well. He was now charged with and indicted on 18 corruption counts. Unfortunately for him, his fortunes would not improve in 2009, as he was impeached from his seat as governor of Illinois. I've always suspected that Blago didn't help himself much when he talked of writing a "tell-all" book. It was pretty amazing to watch the Illinois legislature which rarely gets anything done in a timely fashion, move with lightning speed on the impeachment proceedings. And there was more public humilitiation, like when a federal judge identified him as "Public Official A" in the indictment of Obama's friend, confidant and real estate benefactor, Tony Rezko,who was himself in deep trouble for bribery, money laundering, and a host of other corruption charges.  And just in case anyone didn't understand the seriousness of what talking about political corruption means, former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald declared that Blago had been on a "political corruption crime spree."

Let me clear, I'm not suggesting that the feds were on some sort of witch hunt, because who knows, maybe if given more time, perhaps Blago would have eventually been successful in some of his grandiose money-making schemes. But the point is, he wasn't.  He pocketed as much money as I did from those schemes.  Sure, others made money, but old big-mouthed Blago got what he had coming--at least from the perspective of powerful political players...keep your mouth shut and just let the money flow.